In An Imperfect World
by Haleine Delail
Summary: In a mysterious world where nothing seems right, the Doctor and Martha are shocked to learn who put them there, and why!  Can they get back to normal before their lives become too complicated for words?
1. Chapter 1

**Something new to chew on! So soon! I'm obsessed, it's true. **

**But I'm really excited about this story... I hope you enjoy it, even if it's totally weird!**

* * *

ONE

_I love him to bits._

With five words, she had changed their whole world.

He was mightily irritated at her for turning their lives, their dynamic, upside-down like that. What right did she have? A person doesn't just vomit their emotions all over another and expect to get on with business as usual. There is a protocol, a continuum. There are steps to take, hints to make, factors to consider... his nine-hundred years, her twenty-three, his past, her future. How could she just blunder in like that?

Of course, the rational side of him realised that it was, in fact, a revelation that had been waiting to explode for quite some time. She had waited for her moment, and had fully known that things may never be the same again. She _had_ followed protocol, the continuum. She _had_ taken steps, made hints, considered all the factors. All of those were the reasons why it had taken her until now to say anything.

He was just feeling hit over the head at the moment because he'd been trying to keep her at arm's length for so long, convincing them both that he didn't know. He was used to being the one in control, the one who said what happened next and where the road would take them. Anytime he wasn't in control, it usually meant they were being attacked… so this felt like an ambush.

She had said she hoped he wouldn't remember her saying it. But he did.

_He is just everything to me. And he doesn't even look at me, but I don't care because I love him to bits._

Like a mantra, in a cold, dark, deserted house in 1913.

It was playing in his brain like a broken record.

John Smith had been too caught up in the moment to react, too torn between love and duty to care about what the maid wanted. The Doctor hadn't reacted because he hadn't been particularly surprised. Martha Jones was a spectactular human being, but a terrible actress. Living with her for the past nine months had led to many truths, most of which she thought she'd been hiding.

He sighed heavily as he watched her approach. She _was_ lovely, he couldn't deny her that. Beautiful, actually. Even in the dull grey of a November afternoon in Surrey, her hair shone like obsidian and her brown skin was radiant like gold. She was wearing sleek black velvet and pink, with her hair pulled away from her face, but hanging down her back. And even though her face was downturned with sorrow, he couldn't help but mark her beauty. It wasn't the first time he'd noticed, of course; he wasn't blind or a moron. But it was the first good look he'd had of her since… then.

He assessed. Beautiful, brilliant, athletic, adored him. He needed her in his life, craved her attention and her company, valued her opinion, had nearly endless faith in her. So why didn't _he_ love _her _to bits? He'd like to be able to say that he did, but he didn't. He didn' t know why. He felt certain things when he looked at her, but heart palpitations, desire, lust… those things were not among them. A blockage in his hearts, a fear of getting hurt again? Whatever it was, it was big and ugly and insurmountable for him.

Poor Martha. Perhaps she deserved better. Someday soon, he supposed he'd have to breach the subject with her.

But not today. The sorrow in her eyes, at this moment, had nothing to do with him. It had to do with Lieutenant Timothy Winston Lattimer, now aged 86, honoured in the cathedral square this afternoon for services to the British Empire. Less than twenty-four hours ago, they had been holed up in an abandoned house with Tim at age 14. Thanks to the TARDIS, she was now experiencing the accelerated decay that the Doctor often felt, even when he was on the slow path, with humans. The weight of seventy-two years was pressing down on the shoulders of a twenty-three-year-old. In the life of every companion there came a moment when they finally begin to get their mind around the largesse of space and time. Martha's day was today.

She smiled weakly at him, stopping in her tracks for a moment. He gave her a questioning look, and she nodded subtly, indicating that yes, Lattimer did remember her. She had been certain that he wouldn't, but the Doctor had reassured her that he would. Lattimer was a special person with a special mind. Not just extraordinary, but almost supernatural. He didn't perceive the world the way other humans did, and even if he didn't _remember_ Martha, per se, he'd feel the wake of her in his life, and feel the imprint of their time together.

And then her skin seemed to bubble, her forehead expanded, her chest and hips and legs went all wavy and wonky for a few seconds.

"Martha!" he called out. Instinctively, he reached out to her.

"Doctor!" she called back, also reaching out. The look on her face now reflected how he felt.

The Doctor looked about and realised that the phenomenon was not isolated to Martha. He looked at the church, it rippled. He looked at his own hand, and it rippled. The people, the pavement, the sky, the red poppies displayed everywhere for Armistice day… all rippling, like droplets upon a still pond.

Inside, the Doctor could feel more than just the physical world around them rippling. Something was opening, coming into being. The fabric of time and reality itself was being rung like a bell and reverberating through the soul of this Time Lord, though around him, and slightly out of his reach.

* * *

Martha supposed she should be happy that Lieutenant Lattimer had called her by name. The Doctor had been right. If nothing else, the old man was aware of her etching upon his personal story, how she'd been tied into the adventure which had exposed him to the Time Lord consciousness, and given him insight into the future, and ultimately shaped his military career.

No surprise there; the Doctor was usually right.

She had been five billion years into the future, five hundred years into the past. People were the same everywhere they went. London changed little, as the Doctor had pointed out; prejudice, gossip, entertainment. Even after the Earth was dead and gone, human beings still looked for the same things: comfort, freedom, an answer to the meaning of existence, even if that meant an escape from existence. All of this had made her feel that her life, and especially her life-span, was so small. What was twenty-three years in the grand scheme of things? Come to that, what was seventy-two years? Almost nothing, when looked at from the point of view of a time-traveller.

And yet, the life of Tim Lattimer had practically come and gone in that time. He'd gone from a chipper little boy to an old man in the blink of an eye. Even without the TARDIS to bring them forward in time, she now realised, seventy-two years was a blip. And yet he had aged so dramatically.

Her life was a blip, too. What must the Doctor think, when he looked at her?

When she looked up at him, she knew what he _wasn't_ thinking. She was insignificant. Her existence thus far amounted to approximately one thirty-sixth of the time he'd spent knocking about in time and space… what could that possibly mean to him? How could she ever hope…?

But in that same glance, she felt a fire inside, like she always felt when she saw him. Such intelligence, compassion and power within. A _Time Lord_, so clever it hurt. So tortured it burned. So handsome, it made her melt.

And now he _knew_ the effect he had on her. He was probably thinking about it right now.

There _had _to have been other ways to make John Smith change back… why did she have to go and do that?_ I love him to bits_. What the hell is that?

He looked askance at her, and she smiled wearily, acknowledging that he'd been right. Lattimer knew her.

And then something weird happened. The Doctor suddenly looked momentarily like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. His body seemed to turn to liquid and reverberate.

"Martha!" she heard him call. He was reaching out, as though he were going to fall.

"Doctor!" she called back. Then she realised it was she who might tumble…

A tremor shook them, a great grumbling came up out of the Earth, she was pulled off her feet. At the final moment, she screamed the Doctor's name again, and her last sight was of him running at her, unsteady, panicked. He tripped, but her world went all dark before she saw him fall.


	2. Chapter 2

TWO

It felt as though all of the moisture on Earth had been sucked out through a hose. Something hard and painful was pressed against Martha's cheek. She was cold; she had lost consciousness on a grey November morning, and as far as she could tell, someone had simply put a metal grate under her head and left her on the pavement in front of that cathedral in Surrey.

She attempted to open her eyes, but it was too dry; they practically creaked when she finally did push them open and look about.

She tried to push herself up into a sitting position, but the floor beneath her was inhospitable to her hands. She groaned at the little jab of pain it took for her to get to her feet, and once standing she examined her palms. The metal grating had left a plaid-like pattern pressed into her skin.

One more glance at her surroundings. "What the hell?" she mused.

_This can't be_.

She rubbed her eyes and tried again. She had seen correctly. She stood in one stop, but turned three-hundred-sixty degrees, staring at the room she was in. "Holy… whoa." It was most definitely the TARDIS console room but… something certainly wasn't right.

The console room had been bathed in golden tones, last she had seen it. The walls were a warm yellowish brown, and the complementary lights from behind the roundels were cut from the same part of the spectrum. Usually, there were a couple of pillars that looked organic, almost like trees made of coral, and the control console itself was a living document of repairs and makeshift solutions. The railings had been padded with soft foam pillows and tied with twine, and the one seat in the room had been repaired a few times with duct tape.

But not today. The console room in which she now stood could have been that of an entirely different TARDIS. The walls were silver like stainless steel, and blue light came from the roundel fixtures, giving the room an icy tone. The dome shape coupled with the strange décor reminded Martha decidedly of an igloo. The pillars had the same type of sterile, stainless look, though they were straight and cyllindrical, as cold as the rest of the room. The console and railings were all chrome, though no homey rigged-up or foam remedies softened the look. Silver, silver everywhere. The lone exception was a worn-in black leather seat near the display screen.

It wasn't unattractive, but it didn't feel like home to her. The TARDIS was normally a safe place, and she felt like she belonged. This, ironcally, was completely alien.

Perhaps she _was _in an entirely different TARDIS. Martha knew that the Doctor's planet had been destroyed and he now thought of himself as the last of the Time Lords, but… she had always wondered. The Doctor was a traveller. Was he _really _the only one? Part of the reason he had survived was that he wasn't actually on the planet with the war began, he'd been called home at the height of the fight. Couldn't there be other Time Lords who were travellers as well? Other individuals who had been off-world when the debacle began, expats who had relocated? Families on holiday? Maybe a time crash had happened. Maybe that swirly, wobbly feeling she'd got before blacking out is what happens when two TARDISes get too close to one another.

She remembered the Doctor once telling her that the TARDIS looks like a police box because it had turned that way in the 1960's, to blend in, but that it had got stuck. A TARDIS, when functioning properly, could look like anything.

_That's it. I'm in a different TARDIS! This is so weird!_

She ran for the door and swung it open. As expected, she saw the cathedral in Surrey, lots of poppies, the ceremony to honour Lieutenant Lattimer dissipating. But when she stepped outside and turned to look at the TARDIS, she was crestfallen. It still looked like a blue 1960's police box. What were the odds that another Time Lord would have a police box TARDIS, _here_, in 1985? This was, most likely, her Doctor's TARDIS – what the hell had happened to the inside?

Martha huffed in exasperation, and re-entered the mysteriously changed time vehicle. She walked slowly through the console room, cautiously looking at the unfamiliar features.

"Doctor?" she called out, suspiciously. Her voice echoed in the cavernous room. Even her voice sounded different in the cold space. "Doctor?" she tried again.

He didn't answer. There was no sign of him at all. There was no recently-used sledgehammer thrown across the controls, no long brown coat strewn anywhere, no tool box sitting open on the floor indicating some project on-the-go. She decided to try and look for him. The TARDIS was a big place, but the Doctor had his usual haunts. Bedroom, kitchen, library, media room, casino…

"Doctor?" she called again, approaching the hallway. "Are you here?"

The corridor walls matched the console room. The layout, as far as she could tell, was the same, just with the blue light and chrome instead of the gold and tan.

"Hellooooo?" she sang into the empty spaces. "Blimey, what's going on?"

"Martha?" she heard at last.

"Yeah," she said, moving toward the voice. "Where are you?"

"Don't worry, I'm coming, just give me a minute," the voice said.

But it wasn't the Doctor's voice. Not by a long-shot.

It was a man, but the voice was much more resonant, not nasal like the Doctor's. Relaxed, almost sickly, rather than intense like the Doctor's. And tellingly, it spoke with an American accent, not the Londoner's to which the Doctor's alien tongue had adapted.

Martha's brow furrowed. Who was in the TARDIS with her? Who was invading their home? Was this the same person or thing who had changed the interior of the TARDIS? And if so, how the hell had he done it without the Doctor's consent? And if the Doctor gave consent, then why? And if he hadn't, then where was he? What kind of danger was he in?

She began to back slowly away, moving back towad the console room, as it was the only way out. If someone was here, she needed a means of escape. Mentally, she tried to run through things in the console room that she could use as a weapon, but all of the normal "loose" debris had gone. No tools, no hammers, Doctor's coat to rifle through for a screwdriver.

"Oh, don't trouble yourself," she said uneasily.

"I'm coming," the voice said. Funnily, it didn't sound hurried or worried or concerned in any way. It knew her name, but didn't seem perturbed by the fac that Martha might think it didn't belong there. It wasn't afraid she'd attack or run or sic the Doctor on it.

Martha heard the shuffle of feet. She was in the console room now, her back to the door.

"Martha?" the voice said. "Where are you?"

It was just there, right around the coner. She needed to get ready to bolt!

But when she saw him, her urge to flee totally left her.

He was a tall man, about six feet and thin. Very, very thin. His blue eyes were sunken, and the area around them was discoloured. He was wrapped in a grey plaid blanket, was wearing a tee-shirt and a pair of hospital scrub trousers, and the shuffling of his feet upon the strange TARDIS floor had been made by puffy bedroom slippers. He coughed a few times and cleared his throat violently, and pounded on his chest, before saying, "Excuse me. Don't mind me. The invalid hacks again."

"Yeah, sorry," Martha said. "Who the hell are you?"

From his basic build, she could see that he'd once been a big guy, probably a formidable man at some point. And when he smiled at her question, she could see that he'd probably once been an incredibly handsome man as well. But she felt no threat, nothing other than total confusion and wariness.

"Martha," he said, smiling. "It's me. What's the matter with you?"

"What's the matter with me? What a question!"

"Are you feeling all right?"

"I should ask you the same thing!" Martha exclaimed, looking the man up and down. "Now who are you?"

"It's me! Jack!"

"Jack who?"

He smiled again, and looked at her sideways as if to see whether she was winding him up. "Jack Harkness, you silly goose!"


	3. Chapter 3

THREE

In nine hundred odd years, he'd lost count of how many times some bizarre, random phenomenon had knocked him unconscious. He'd really, _really _lost count of how many times _anything _he didn't like had knocked him unconscious. But having been through it many times didn't make the headache any less annoying.

And this time, it came with a horrible gut feeling. It wasn't the gut feeling that one gets when one suspects evildoing, or that the weather is about to change. It wasn't the "instinct" or "intuition" that comes with knowing how one's friend will react to bad news.

It was the churning in the guts of a Time Lord. There was a disturbance, and it felt very personal, somehow.

"Martha?" he said. Last he'd seen her, she'd been terrified and reaching out to him, and likely she'd been affected by whatever was causing the unrest. She was probably fine, as he seemed to be, but he had to be sure. "Martha?" he asked again, pushing himself up.

He opened his eyes to find himself safely inside his TARDIS, and Martha Jones standing nearby, tapping her foot. Her hands were on her hips. She looked annoyed.

"What the hell is this?" she asked him.

"What the hell is what?"

"What did you do to the TARDIS?"

He furrowed, and got to his feet. His lips were pursed in a quizzical fashion, and he looked about, to try and work out why she was so confused. Far as he could tell, the TARDIS was fine. Goldish and brown, with warm light coming from the roundels. He peeled off his coat and threw it onto one of the tree pillars.

"What d'you mean?" he asked, now just as confused as she.

"It's all weird," she said, crinkling her nose. She turned a one-eighty hands still on hips.

"No, it's… wait, Martha," he said, noticing her clothes. He looked her up and down. This annoyed her. She switched her weight to one hip. "You're wearing a blue jumper and tan cargos."

"Yeah, thanks."

"What happened to black velvet?" he asked, referring to the outfit she'd been wearing before, when she'd spoken to Lattimer and then fallen unconscious after the reverb. Normally he'd never have noticed, except he'd been thinking about the _I love him to bits _revelation, and contemplating Martha's considerable appeal, wondering why he seemed to be immune. He'd liked what she was wearing. Sometimes, he made odd, useless mental notes of things…

"Black velvet," she said flatly. "Seriously?"

_Why is she so annoyed?_

"How long have I been out?" he asked.

"I dunno," she answered. "Just came to myself. What the hell happened?"

He scratched the back of his head and squinted. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"Well, we'd gone to the tribute to Lattimer," she began. "Then, there was, like, this vibration. Next thing I know, I'm waking up here." She looked round the room again, totally puzzled by what she saw.

He noticed her looking. "And none of this looks familiar to you?"

"Well, it's familiar, but it's not how I remember it."

"How do you remember it?"

"All… you know… chrome-y. Silver and blue."

"Silver and blue."

"Yeah. Don't you remember?"

"Martha, is it possible that you got knocked on the noggin and don't know it?"

She put her hand on her head and felt for a tender spot. "I don't feel anything. Why?"

"You know who I am?" he wanted to know.

"You're the Doctor," she answered. "Time Lord, TARDIS, yeah. I know you."

"I think you're experiencing a kind of selective amnesia," he said. "But it's like someone specifically extracted certain details from your mind."

"And then changed them?"

"Maybe. Who are your parents?"

"Clive and Francine Jones. My brother is Leo, my sister is Tish. I was born 8th January, 1984." she said, exasperated.

"Who's Prime Minister?" he asked, taking her chin in one hand and shining the sonic light into her eyes.

"I don't know," she said, squinting, instinctively pulling back from him. "You flew away with me just before the election, remember?"

"Hm."

"Doctor, I'm still me! I just can't come to terms with this TARDIS! Are you sure you haven't changed the theme recently?"

"Not in a couple of years," he said, looking down his nose at her. "Why is it just _this _detail that's changed? Why limit it to the interior appearance of the TARDIS? Do you know what the outside looks like?"

"Blue police box, right?"

"Yeah. It's weird. I mean, if someone's going to mess with your mind, why that? Why not remove me from your life, or implant other information? Or…" He flashed the sonic in her eyes again.

"Doctor, what are you doing?" she shrieked, grabbing his wrist, resisting. "That hurts!"

"Are you a drone? If you've been conditioned as a sleeper drone, I can undo it…"

"I'm not a bloody sleeper drone," she cried. "Now get away from me!"

"Martha, stay still," he said, still searching. "If you've been conditioned, you won't know it, that's why I have to probe you."

"There will be no _probing_!" she yelled. "Now get off!" She pushed hard with both hands, and the Doctor stumbled backwards a bit.

"Okay, no evidence of conditioning," he said. "So, what's the game, eh?"

"I don't know," she insisted. "You're the Time Lord."

He began to pace. "Replacing details of the TARDIS," he muttered. "Personality's basically intact, family is the same, you have memories of when we met, you know me… What could anyone have to gain by making you think you're in the wrong TARDIS? And nothing explains your clothes."

A little timer went off somewhere in the room. Martha looked at her watch and switched it off.

"What's that?" he asked.

"It's time for Jack's medication," she said. "I'll be right back." She turned to go.

"Excuse me, time for what?"

"Jack's meds," she said. "It's been four hours, time for another dose."

"Jack who?" he asked.

Her shoulders sagged and she looked at him with tedium. "_Now_ which one of us has amnesia, Doctor?"

"Humour me," he suggested. "Who's Jack?"

"Jack Harkness, genius," she said, sort of chuckling. "He's your friend. He lives down the hall here. Body in a perpetual state of decay? Any of this ringing a bell?"

"Some of it is familiar. The rest is merely disturbing," he told her, almost not moving his lips. "How do you know Jack Harkness?"


	4. Chapter 4

FOUR

A high-pitched beeping interrupted Martha's confab with the sickly stranger who called himself Jack.

"What's that?" she asked, turning toward the chrome console, where the sound was coming from. "She moved toward the display screen, but couldn't make hide nor hare of the symbols."

"That reminds me," Jack said. "It's about time for my meds."

Just then, the door to the outside world opened, and a tall Time Lord dressed in blue pin-stripes strode into the TARDIS.

"Where the hell have you been?" asked Martha. "And what's with this colour scheme?"

He ignored her question and dashed round the console and pulled the screen toward him. Though, she could swear that she caught him glancing at her very briefly before he began speaking. "It's a distress signal," he exclaimed. "The Pad Loeschen Beast has been found!"

"The what?"

"It's this creature that disappeared before my time," he said. "The Time Lords had tried to track it down, and grew to suspect it had been taken. You know, kidnapped."

"Why would someone do that?"

"Well, it's a highly intelligent creature," the Doctor said, sort of shrugging a little. "It knows technology and planetary bioethics, game theory both classical and Escatrussian. It has a head for maths and a perfect imprint memory. It's also exceedingly congenial. It's perceived as harmless and soft… you know. Harmless and soft."

"So someone kidnapped a living, breathing, being a thousand years ago because it reminds them of a teddy bear?"

"A clever teddy bear."

"Fantastic."

"So what do we do?" interjected Jack.

"Martha and I will go in and rescue it. You will save your strength," the Doctor said, taking his friend by the shoulders and sitting him down on the leather seat.

Jack sighed heavily. "I'm not _completely _useless you know. Let me do something."

"You will," the Doctor assured him. "I'll need someone in the home base. Loose cannons need to be monitored." The Doctor glanced at Martha, but it did not escape her notice.

_What's that about? A little righteous indignation doesn't make me a loose cannon… and this still didn't answer the question of who Jack Harkness was, and where in Creation he'd come from!_

Jack nodded, then rolled his eyes. The Doctor drifted out of earshot for a second, and Jack looked at Martha and mused, "He just wants to protect you. You know how it is."

Martha's brow furrowed.

"Okay, kids," the Doctor said. He came round the console to stand near Martha and the mysterious Jack. He put his hand on Martha's arm as he spoke. He squeezed a little, and her heart skipped a beat. "The Loeschen has been in a torture chamber for the past millennium. It's going to be volatile at best. Resistant certainly, and vicious at worst. It will see any attempt to get near it as an attack, so we have to go lightly… do the teleport transfer quickly and with as little fuss as possible. By the way, I like you in velvet."

"Doctor," Jack said, his voice gone low and warning. "Eye on the ball."

"Er, thanks," Martha managed, before the Doctor began speaking again.

He'd tapped out some numbers and letters on his computer keypad, and turned the screen to face Martha. "Here are schematics of the warehouse where he's being kept."

"Okay," she said. "Which room is he in?"

The Doctor blinked hard. "Oh. Erm, he's here…" he said, pointing to a space toward the middle of what looked like a labyrinthine complex.

Martha stared at the screen for a long time, looking it over. She could see hallways and ducts, a million different doors and windows and gates, miles of corridor, guards at every corner.

"Their security devices work on the Selfan B frequency," he told her. "And their communications system is similar; fairly sophisticated."

With that, he flipped a few chrome controls and the TARDIS wheezed away to its next destination. Once the machine made its halt, he set the hand-brake and turned to Martha.

"Thanks for this, Martha," he said. "Coming in with me. I couldn't do it without you, you know." He reached out and hugged her.

"Yes, you could," Jack muttered under his breath. As she felt herself enveloped by this strange moment, she looked at the man on the stool, and into his sunken eyes. The corners of his mouth were taut, and one of his eyebrows was cocked, gazing at the Doctor with utter _I give up _in his expression. Jack was a little disgusted, but Martha couldn't quite understand why.

Then she got distracted.

Martha had hugged the Doctor many times before, but this time it felt different. Usually, she could feel the bones of his arms around her shoulders and neck, his rib cage pressed against her, in an intense, short burst of excitement and camaraderie. This was more like sinking into a pool of warm milk. His arms felt somehow fleshier, tightening gradually around her shoulders, his hands spreading like a blossom against her black velvet jacket. It was warm and full, as if he were putting his whole body, every muscle into the embrace.

"Don't mention it," she managed to say. "It's what I'm here for."

He pulled away from the hug, and took one of her hands in his. "I know, but… thanks. I don't say it enough, I mean, that I appreciate you."

"I appreciate you too, Doctor. Now…"

"Okay, let's get in there," the Doctor said, taking her hand and pulling her toward the door. They stumbled outside and in front of them loomed a great, big white building. The wall they were staring at was enormous, at least fifty feet high. She couldn't see on either side of the building exactly where it ended, since other buildings in the tight space got in its way. This would be interesting.

_But, did the Doctor just say 'let's get in there' without so much as a plan B, or a warning?_

"Wait, I don't even know… what do you mean let's get in there? We haven't… Doctor, wait!"

"You'll be fine, Martha," he called, running off in one long direction to her left. "You're always fine! I learned that the hard way! I'll meet you at the Loeschen."

"Doctor, wait!"

He had thrown her into the water without any swimming lessons! No plan, no instruction, no word on what he expected of her… just a baptism by fire.

_Wonky TARDIS, wonky Doctor… total stranger ailing inside. What the hell?_

* * *

When the TARDIS halted, the Doctor sat atop the duct-tape repaired seat of his TARDIS, staring at the display screen.

"What's a Pad Loeschen Beast?" Martha asked. "Sounds like Thai-Scandinavian fusion cuisine."

He chuckled. "It's a very, very clever, and very, very useful creature the Time Lords were trying to locate for hundreds of years. All evidence pointed to abduction, unfortunately. Resourceful and valuable."

"And now he's been found?" asked Martha. "Well, let's get him out!"

The Doctor leaned back and tousled his hair. He crossed one brown pin-striped ankle over his other knee. "Well, yeah, but it's not going to be easy," he muttered. "He's in this ginormous complex with miles of hallway and guards everywhere. That place is highly advanced, and it's like a maze."

"Have you got a schematic ?"

"Well, yes, but… strategy. I'm not kidding about the guards, Martha," he said. "We're going to need an extra lift to get in there, not to mention someplace for the teleport to deposit it."

"What does the complex look like?"

He sighed, and pulled up the floorplan on the screen. "Here it is. Every corner has a sentry. Every single one. The Beast is in this area," he explained, indicating a shaded patch on the screen. "Now, they have a Selfan B security system, so their frequency is high, and highly specific, but I've got a way to flout it."

"Okay, so if you take this door," she suggested. "And I take the other one… we should be able to get inside and meet in that room."

"Martha, I want to give you something that's called a perception filter," he said to her. "It's part of the TARDIS' workings. It allows her to go unseen, to be sort of under-the-radar. If I can put it over us as a shroud, then we can be unnoticed, though not invisible. We can be seen if we choose to be."

Pointing at the screen, her face lit up like Times Square, and she said, "I bet this is a blind spot right here. I could give this one the slip." She appeared to be talking to herself. "And this area is kind of long… like, the hallway is a bloody runway. I bet if I moved fast and carried something over my shoulder, I could be mistaken for an officer."

"Martha, are you listening to me?"

"Yeah, yeah," she said. "Go unseen, under-the-radar. Tell me something I don't know!" She was excited and smiling, but her enthusiasm came with a price.

"Erm, hello? You didn't hear a word I said!"

"Come on, let's go!" Briefly, she grabbed his hand and tried to pull him in the direction of the door. He wasn't ready to move, so she gave up and ran out the door on her own.

"Martha!" he screamed. "Get back here! You're going to get yourself… blimey! What's got into her?"

He took off running after her.


	5. Chapter 5

FIVE

Martha lurked about outside the complex. She walked away from the TARDIS, halfheartedly looking for an entrance, then back again. She contemplated going back inside, but she knew Jack was still in there, and she had no bloody idea what to say to that man. He seemed to be a friend to the Doctor, seemed to know her, but... what the hell? And when the Doctor had shown affection, Jack had expressed disapproval. Maybe he was jealous; did he fancy her? Did he fancy the Doctor? Was he bitter about any physical contact because he was so sickly? Or was he one of those asexual types who just felt that any fraternising that way would stand in the way of a working relationship?

She had a million and one questions, but she couldn't ask them now, not until she worked out a few more things. She resolved to speak to the Doctor himself about Jack, as soon as she got a moment alone with him. That is, if he wasn't too insane to listen.

But she desperately did not want to go trundling into the giant complex with no prep work, no idea what was coming, no weapon, no psychic paper, and most importantly, no Doctor. He'd gone off ahead of her and simply said to meet him in the room with the Loeschen… how was she supposed to do that, with a sentry at every corner?

"Martha!" she heard from inside the TARDIS. "Are you out there?"

She stuck her head back inside. "Yes?"

"The Doctor wants to know where you are," Jack said calmly, holding the TARDIS' radio comm device in his hand. "He's in the inner sanctum with the Loeschen, and he needs your help."

She walked up the ramp. "I have no idea how to get in there, Jack," she said, shrugging. "He didn't give me anything to go on! Nothing! No idea the rules of this planet, the beings who live here… am I dealing with humans, humanoids or giant squids? Will their weapons kill me, or maim me? And why would he walk away?"

Jack opened his mouth to answer, and then froze. After a moment's hesitation, he said into the comm device, "Doctor, if your situation is stable, then just sit tight. I'm sending her in right away."

He set the mic back on its hook. "Martha, you're the one who told him to leave you alone."

"What?" she asked, shock coming through.

"You said to stop treating you like a gap-year intern, and let you work out stuff for yourself," Jack told her. "Truth be told, I thought it was kind of mean of you. You know him – he just wants to take you under his wing. And in other places."

She missed the last bit. "I said to leave me alone… when?"

"Months ago! So he stopped giving you details. He didn't want to upset you."

"I said I wanted to work things out for myself, so he just… stopped giving me vital info?"

"Yes."

"And started running off and leaving me to fend for myself on a strange planet?"

"Yes," he told her. "He did. He does anything you ask him to, you know that. Martha, what's got into you?"

"I honestly have no idea!" she replied, almost yelling now. She buried her hands in her hair and tugged in frustration. "Anything I ask him to?"

"Of course. Anyway, you'd better get in there and try and find him," Jack suggested. "He can't teleport that thing out of there without a decoy, and I'm afraid that's you, sweetie."

Martha sighed heavily. "This is rubbish!" she said to herself, tromping back down the ramp.

Just then, an alarm sounded. Again.

"Martha, wait," Jack said. "That's a distress call coming from within the TARDIS' systems. The Doctor must have activated it remotely using the sonic… he's in trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"I don't know," he said. "But he doesn't use this alarm unless he means it. Go!"

She dashed out the door and ran to her left, in the direction the Doctor had gone. She tried a set of double doors, and they opened. She froze, knowing there were guards everywhere. An alarm was also sounding somewhere inside, but she didn't know where or why.

But suddenly, she heard an army of footsteps, and before she knew what was happening, they got louder. Then much louder.

"Run!" she heard from her right. The Doctor was running at her, almost at full pelt, though stumbling a bit. He hacked and coughed after using his voice that way. He had screamed at her in response to the twenty or thirty armed guards currently running after him.

As he passed her, he tripped against her, and it was all she could do to stay on her feet. He basically caught himself, grabbed her arm and pulled her behind him. They ran hard back to the TARDIS together, still being pursued. They flew inside, and in five seconds, a dematerialising TARDIS was being shot at by electrical guns from the outside.

As the vessel bumped and tilted, Jack asked, "What happened in there?"

"I was caught," the Doctor answered. "They turned on the gas." As if on cue, he hacked a few times, doubling over at the console.

"You all right?" Martha asked.

"I'll be fine," he told her. "I have a respiratory bypass, I just forgot to use it. Happened too fast. But it means I can expel the toxins quicker." He hacked again.

"Why did you get yourself caught?"

"I didn't _want_ to be caught, Martha, but I didn't have a decoy as I should have," he scolded. "That was supposed to be your job!"

"Well, you have a funny way of telling me what you expect," she said. "That is to say, without language, or any comprehensible form of communication whatsoever."

"Martha, please…"

"How am I supposed to back you up if you don't tell me what to do? I'm on a strange planet with strange people, rescuing some creature with a teleport, and you don't give me so much as a hint!"

"Okay, listen," the Doctor said calmly. "You're upset, and you're right to be upset. I'm sorry. From now on, I'll communicate better."

She paused and looked at him sceptically. His big brown eyes seemed deep like pools, and he looked absolutely sincere. His face was remorseful, almost sad.

She turned her head and looked at Jack, who had made a little wheezing sound. "Doctor, can I talk to you in private, please?" She was going to ask him about the ailing stranger, once and for all.

"Yeah," the Doctor croaked, hitting his chest with his fist. "I'll be in the media room."

They watched him go. Before Martha could move to follow him, Jack caught her wrist. "Go easy on him, okay? I know how you feel, but life hasn't been easy for him since… you know."

"Since what?"

"The revelation. The house in 1913. The confession of love," he said. "Sound familiar?"

"Oh. Yeah."

* * *

_Holy God, has she lost her mind?_

The Doctor had known that after the disturbance that had knocked them both out, Martha had been acting a bit funny. But as he'd said to her earlier, her personality was more or less intact – she was still clever, plucky, spunky. But this behaviour was really outside! He'd begun to give her instructions on how to survive in an alien environment, warnings on how, frankly, not to die, and she'd completely blown him off. Was he just reeling from that fact that Martha Jones usually hung on his every word, and he'd got used to it, and he was a little disappointed that she was thinking for herself?

_No_, he decided. _She's acting weird._

He sonicked his way into the complex, and with some quick-like-a-cat moves, he sonicked the laser gun out of the guard's hand, then shorted out his comm system, giving him a sonic headache, rendering him unconscious. The Doctor never carried a weapon but sometimes his trusty screwdriver was the next best thing. He tossed it up in the air, caught it smugly, then shoved it in his breast pocket. He picked up the gun, taking a page from Martha's hasty plan, and thought he might come off as an officer.

And then he ran again.

He passed by a corridor, and saw something that disturbed him.

"No, no, no, no, no," he said to himself, muttering, backing up. Slowly, he turned his head to the right. He cursed.

He'd seen a little blue heap of sweater on the floor as he'd passed by. He was hoping that it was a blanket or pile of rags someone tossed on the floor, or maybe a small officer in a different coloured uniform who had passed out in the hall. But it wasn't.

"Martha, Martha, Martha, Martha!" he hissed at her, approaching. "Why the hell wouldn't you listen to me?"

She was lying on her side, and there was a two-pronged mark on her jawline where she'd been poked by an electrical prod, the kind the staff carry. The Doctor looked about. There were no guards in the immediate vicinity. Likely, whomever had zapped her had gone for a restraining device or a transport of some type. They'd been given a lucky window of time, and he had to get them out fast.

He bent down and turned her on her back. He slid one arm under her neck and the other arm under her knees, and stood up, lifting her from the floor. He went back the way he'd come, and looked both ways before crossing. The coast was clear for the moment, and he hurried out of the building with Martha in his arms.

He moved slowly, so as not to make any noise. As he exited the building, Martha stirred, moaned a little bit.

"Shhh," he said.

"What's happening?" she whispered.

"You were zapped unconscious," he told her. "We're going back to the TARDIS. We'll have to regroup and try to rescue the Loeschen again later."

She moaned.

They entered the blue box, and he walked up the ramp and set Martha down on the home-repaired seat. Her fingers found the edges of the duct tape peeling up, and immediately pulled away, surprised.

"They've seen you now," he said. "I don't know how we'll play it now. I suppose we'll have to try a perception filter… oh wait! I could swear I said something about that before you took off running like a total lunatic!"

"I don't do exposition," she said. "You know that."

"You didn't listen and it almost got you killed. From now on, when we're on a strange planet with unfamiliar weapons, you listen to me!"

"Oh, yes sir," Martha replied with malice in her voice. "Why don't we just go back to 1913, then, eh?"

"Martha, this isn't like you!"

"This is exactly like me, Doctor," she insisted. "We've been through this."

He turned away from her and tugged at his hair with both hands. He let out a little cry of frustration.

_This can't be just a bit of selective amnesia. This is a ripple effect of some sort. Time and space are disturbing her - I can feel it._


	6. Chapter 6

**Thank you, everyone for all the wonderful reviews! I've been meaning to respond, I just... well, I haven't. I'm sorry! I'd love to send everyone a message soon!**

**Okay guys, FAIR WARNING!** **Things are about to take a fairly hideous turn. If you had high hopes for a cutesy wootsy reunion, well... sorry.**

**Don't worry - all is not lost. Things are just awry for a while.**

* * *

SIX

"Doctor?" she said softly, wandering into the media room. He was sitting on the sofa. He switched off the screen he was watching and looked at her.

"Martha," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, I didn't come here for an apology…"

"But I owe you one," he said to her pointedly.

"You already apologised," she said. "What's done is done." She sat down beside him on the sofa.

"I apologised for the Loeschen debacle," he conceded, setting the remote control on the sofa table beside him. "But not… well, it's a funny old life, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is."

"And it's been really funny lately. Since 1913, I mean."

"Yeah, definitely."

_Finally something I can relate to in the stainless steel TARDIS! Awkward past conversations!_

"I mean ever since it came out…" he said, choking a bit. "In that house. It's like it just came tumbling out, this revelation that… and it changed everything."

"Yes," she said, staring at her hands in her lap. "I suppose it did. How could it not?"

"You've always been independent, and I know that, I respect that," he said. "You want to work things out on your own, and that's… great. That's what makes you so clever. But today was a disaster, and that's my fault. I guess I've been pulling away from you, against my own instincts, ever since then. I mean, you tell someone you love them, even if it's by accident, and you can't go back."

"I know." She was still staring at her fingers intertwining. "Doctor, I…"

"No, listen," he said, taking her hands. Her eyes shifted naturally to his. "I know things are weird for you. I know that, in a way, this whole world is a new world for you. I changed everything."

"_You_ changed it?"

"But the fact is, Martha, I love you, and… I couldn't keep it in any longer."

Her jaw dropped.

"I love you, and I would do anything to keep you here with me," he said, his voice beginning to crack, his breathing beginning to grow desperate. "If it makes us an inefficient team, if it makes us awkward, if it drives Jack barmy… I don't care. I need you."

She still couldn't speak. "D.. Doc…"

"I can't bear the thought that I might come down too hard and scare you off," he continued. "Can't bear the thought of you leaving me at all. But then, I could never cause you grief…"

"Doctor, just stop a second…"

"So if you wanted to go, I could never keep you against your will."

"I don't want to go, Doctor," she said, pressing her hand against his lapel. "Relax. Just slow down, take a deep breath. You're starting to panic."

He took her wrist and kissed her hand. He enveloped her little fist in both of his, and pressed it to his hearts. She could feel the frantic rhythm inside beginning to slow, and his breathing returning to normal.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm probably scaring you, doing just the thing I don't want to do."

"You're not scaring me," she told him. He looked at her, and she smiled tenderly. "Paying me too much attention, Doctor, that is something that could never make me want to leave you." She was whispering, for fear of losing control of her voice.

The Doctor's eyes opened wide. "What?"

"I don't know what you thought I said before, but I've been waiting so long for this… you can't even imagine."

"Martha, when I said what I said," he began, grasping her hand even tighter. "In front of Joan and Tim… you seemed so… I don't know. Like you were bored by it. Like the tedium of my loving you…"

"Wait… you said… _what_, in front of Joan and Tim?"

"When I said I loved you… when it _came out_ like it did," he said, voice cracking even further. "I thought I might die. This is… this is…"

"Doctor, I think one of us has lost our mind, and I'm really not sure which. But one way or another, whether you said it then in 1913, or I say it now, it doesn't change the fact. I love you too. And I will _never_ walk away. I could never. Today is a blip, an anomaly… we can learn from it."

"Martha," he whispered, eyes shut tight. "Say it again."

"I love you," she whispered back. "I love you."

Both of them were crying now, and in a great bursting moment of desperation, the Doctor took her cheeks in both hands and kissed her, hard. Her fingers dug into his jacket and they clung to each other like two people starved for one another. Before she could quite grasp what was happening, his tongue was in her mouth, pushing forcefully inside, and suddenly his arms were moving down her body. He pulled her against him tightly, around her arms and shoulders. He was voracious and hungry, and cutting off her air.

For the moment, she didn't care. Her hands spread out against his chest, feeling his body through a couple layers of fabric, but it was more than she'd ever got from him in the past. She could feel just the hint of a curve of muscle, and could get a sense of how he heaved, moved when he felt hot. He let out a little groan, and it sounded like a symphony to her, the little gesture, the sound that said he wanted her. She caught breaths through her nose, little exhalations – it was enough to stay conscious, stay euphoric in his embrace.

And suddenly, she found herself being pushed backward. At first, she lay back willingly, letting her body do what felt natural, do what it wanted. But when she felt the weight of him coming down on her, and a hard-as-iron erection pressing against her thigh, something went _ding _in her head.

_He wants to do this… now. In five minutes, he'll be inside me. In ten minutes, we'll probably be finished. _

_Then what? Then discuss Jack? Then ask what happened to the inside of the TARDIS? Ask why his behaviour has been so strange, and why he thinks _he _is the one who confessed his love in 1913, not me? No way. We can't get back to that, once the deed is done because we'll be off and running… or back down to Earth in the most horrible, awkward way possible. _

_No, there's too much to say, too much to do before the clothes can come off…_

"Doctor," she whispered as his lips pulled away from hers and buried themselves in the crook of her neck. "I think we need to talk."

"What's to say?" he asked into her flesh. "We love each other." He shifted so he could get his hands between their bodies. They crawled up inside her jacket and spread over her pink silk blouse. Then he pressed his lips to hers again.

The feel of his hands on her made her go liquid soft and lose her resolve for a few seconds, but reason then returned.

"D-teh," she muttered through her pressed lips. "Sppppp!"

"What?" he asked, pulling away, but not listening.

"Stop, I said." Now he was looking down at her, eyes narrowed and driven. He undid the two buttons of her black velvet jacket. He spread her lapels apart forcefully and dived in, planting hungry kisses all over her collar bone and shoulders, all of the flesh now exposed.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because," she said, pushing at his shoulders, trying to get him to stop and listen. "We have to talk before we can do this! Would you slow down and pay attention to what I'm saying?"

"What do you want to talk about?" he asked, now sliding his hands invasively down her sides and around to her bum. He squeezed.

She squirmed. "Doctor, I said slow down! Stop! I need to know some things!"

"I'll tell you anything you want," he told her. He ran his tongue across the tops of her breasts, and bit her flesh just a little bit too hard to be playful.

"Doctor, seriously, quit it, you're actually hurting me now," she protested, still pushing at his shoulders. She began to resist with her legs as well, but she was pinned down by the weight of him. "I'm not kidding!"

"Me neither, Martha," he groaned against her skin. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know, and then some, but I have to make love to you first. Right now... have to."

"No you don't! Not yet!"

With that, he pushed his hands between them again and began to fumble at the zip of her velvet trousers. His mouth, however, was again buried in her neck. Her arms were awkwardly pinned back against the sofa by his shoulders. His position gave him no dexterity, and he was desperate and out of control. Before either of them realised, he'd torn the zip out of its stitches, away from the fabric.

At the sound, the Doctor groaned again, and Martha gasped.

"I don't want to do this, Doctor," she insisted. "You've got to listen to me!"

"Yes, you do want to," he insisted, forcing his hands down into the back of her trousers. "I know you do."

"Not like this!"

He groaned again, and ground his erection into her thigh. "Exactly like this."

Now, it was no longer about the things they needed to discuss before they could make love. Now, it was about the fact that he wouldn't stop. He was _going_ to have her, whether she liked it or not. There was, Martha knew, a word for that. She wouldn't let herself think it, though. Not yet.

But his hands were making their way round to the front. They had already found their way inside her knickers.

_Oh God, oh God… this has got to be a nightmare! What do I do? Oh God, what do I do? In a few seconds his fingers will be between my legs, and he'll be pushing me open and I'll be saying no… and we won't be able to turn back from there! There will be no going back, not ever. Not for him, not for me, and not for us. This is the end…_

Her arms were no match for his drive, her legs were pinned. Almost without conscious thought, with every ounce of energy and desperation in her body, she let out a great cry and heaved. She gave one hard roll to her left, sending both of them tumbling, with a big thud, to the floor beside the sofa.

She was free of his grip for the moment, so she got up on her knees. "What the fuck is the matter with you?" she shouted.

He sat up and seemed to shake off a daze. When he looked at her, his face registered shock. Beyond shock. "I…"

"Do you realise what you almost did? Do you have _any_ comprehension?" she continued to shout.

"I… I almost…" he gasped and got to his feet. "I almost…"

"Yeah. You almost!" She stood up as well. "You know what? You stay away from me for a while. For a good, good long while."

"Yes… I think… Martha, I'm sorry!"

"I know," she said. "I can see that. But you are… you're out of control. You've gone insane!"

He gulped. "Yes, yes. Clearly."

"And I need to be away from you. So I'm going to my room. If you follow me in there before you're invited, you might as well just take me home and never plan on hearing from me again, yeah?"

"Okay," he agreed. "Okay."

She stomped out of the room, and ran down the hall, holding the zip of her trousers shut. She got inside the dark bedroom and slammed the door. Without turning on the light, she fell against the door and sobbed. Her body fell apart and she crumpled into a little ball on the floor and cried hard into her knees.

_Something is more than just wrong. You can say I have lost my mind, but certain things are marked indelibly upon my soul, and the Doctor is one of them. I know, from the depths of my being: that is _not _the Doctor in there. It couldn't be._


	7. Chapter 7

SEVEN

"Martha?" the Doctor said softly, wandering into the media room. She was sitting on the sofa. She looked at him and switched off the screen she was watching.

"Hi," she said.

"How do you feel?" he asked, awkwardly straightening his brown suit jacket.

"Calmer," she said. Though, she looked about at the room, and he could tell she was still reeling from the gold and brown tones. The warm interior had got her really worked up.

But he played along. "Good," he nodded, sitting down next to her. "Can we talk, then?"

"Yeah, but can I talk first?"

He held out his palms. "Shoot."

"I just want you to see where I'm coming from," she said, touching his leg for emphasis. "That day in 1913, when you… you know…"

He furrowed. "When I? Why don't you tell me?"

"When you said you love me…"

_Whoa! Now we're getting somewhere!_

"…I guess I've just been more standoffish than usual," she continued. "I mean, how could I not? Someone tells you they love you, and you can't just go back to the way things were straight away. But I absolutely adore travelling with you. I think we can, and do, do some real good in the universe, and that's why I said I would stay with you. But only if nothing changed, remember?"

"Okay, fair enough," he commented, hoping she'd say more. She was opening up, getting him closer to the bottom of the problem.

"I can't… I don't…" she sighed hard. "I just can't return the favour, Doctor. You either love someone or you don't, and…"

"You don't."

"No, I'm sorry."

"It's all right, Martha. I understand." He was playing along some more.

"I don't feel that way about you, so we can't be together that way," she reasoned. "That means nothing can change. You and me and Jack… friends like always."

_Again with Jack. Why does she keep mentioning Jack?_

"I see."

"But that also means you can't run around thinking you're in charge of me, giving me orders and being all protective," she insisted. "You're not my parent or my boyfriend or my keeper or whatever. I need you to stop hovering."

The Doctor took a giant, deep breath and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. "Martha, this is my ship, and I _am _in charge. I appreciate your independence, but we're dealing with alien elements, unknown atmospheres… entire planets and civilizations come under fire. We put not just our own lives on the line, but lots of others as well. And I've been doing this a long, long time. That makes me, to a certain extent, the teacher, and you the student."

She opened her mouth to answer, but he requested that she let him finish.

"It's not about being protective or hovery because I have a crush on you or whatever. It's about me having the experience, and you learning everything you can. And most importantly, it's about you not getting killed. So can we agree that you'll at least _listen_?"

She sighed, "Yes, I'll listen. That's fair, I guess."

"Thank you. But can I ask… I'm a little fuzzy on the details," he said. "What were my exact words in 1913? It was a hectic day, and, well, you know how these things go."

She looked him in the eyes with sadness. "John Smith and I were talking about what I do for you as your companion, and I said that you were lonely. He said… oh, something like, 'Well of course he is. The Doctor is in love with you, and all you want is to tag along.' He said he knew it because he'd had dreams as the Doctor…"

"So when I confessed, it was really John Smith."

"At first. Later, after you were you again… you really don't remember?"

"Love's a funny thing," he said, nose crinkled.

"Well, after you were yourself, I said that I understood that John Smith would have said anything to hurt me, because I represented the problem at hand. I wanted him to be the Doctor again, and he wanted to stay with Joan. You disagreed with me, and said that John Smith was a man who told the truth, and you left it at that. The look in your eyes…"

"Unmistakable," the Doctor finished for her. He remembered that unmistakable look in _her_ eyes after it had come to his attention. What she was saying now made absolutely no sense to him, but he wasn't going to tell her that now.

"Thank you, I guess I needed to hear that," the Doctor said. "Now… tell me about Jack."

"Well, that's a random switch. He's fine, I guess, feverish as always, but no significant decay this week… come to that, where is he? I haven't seen him in a while. He missed his meds."

"You know, I guess there's a rash of amnesia… it's catching or something, because I can't remember how you know him!" He tried to sound whimsical, but Martha didn't seem to buy it.

"Doctor, please," she sighed. "If you're just taking a walk down memory lane…"

"Humour me."

"All right," she conceded evenly, though she was exasperated on the inside. "You introduced us."

"When did I do that?"

"He was here in the TARDIS when you first invited me to come along with you, back in that alley after my brother's birthday party. That's when I first met him."

"And what exactly is his condition?"

"Really?"

"Yeah," he said, again, trying to go whimsical. "You've just told me again that you don't love me. Give a bloke a break."

She chuckled as though she thought he'd gone barmy. She shook her head and said, "You called it a Temporally-Induced Indefinite State of Inertia. His body is decaying and unraveling… indefinitely."

"Temporally-Induced?"

"Yes," she said, rolling her eyes.

"That means brought on by time energy?"

"Yes."

"Okay, I think I get it. Was that, by any chance, something that my good friend Rose did to him by accident?"

"Yes. Honestly, Doctor."

"Wow," he muttered, staring at the floor. "I mean, yeah, it's all coming back to me now. Thanks for that. So, then after he was doused with time energy, I must have taken him aboard knowing that he'd fall into disrepair soon."

"Yes."

"And he lives… where?"

"Down the hall, in that round bedroom next to the rec room."

"Okay, thank you very much for your help, Miss Jones. Will you now join me in the console room?"


	8. Chapter 8

**I'm trying to pace myself, but I'm not able to stop! I'm out of control, I tell you! (Wow, you people must think I have no life...)**

**By the way, whichever one of you said "Mirror World" in your review was right on the money! Actually, the phrase I used in the outline for this story was "Bizzarro World," but I didn't want to go all Superman, since I'm not overly familiar with his world. So when I revised it a couple weeks ago, I changed it to "Mirror." :-)**

* * *

EIGHT

Martha had stopped sobbing but didn't feel any better. She was still angry, and felt like something sick had crawled inside her and taken up residence. There was a contamination in her world; the person she loved more than anything now could not be trusted. She felt like she had nothing and no-one to depend upon.

She was still crouched against her door in the dark when a knock came.

"Hey, you," Jack's voice said from outside. "You okay?"

Her breath hitched as she almost let herself cry again.

_Oh, Jack. Another reminder that things aren't what they should be. He's a nice enough bloke, but I don't think he belongs in my life._

"I'm alive," she responded. Her voice was scratchy like sandpaper. She cleared her throat and stood up, reaching out to turn on the lights in her room. Her insides deflated once more at the familiar foreignness. The lamps and bedspread were blue, and while the main lights were normal, the accented lighting high above on the TARDIS' ceiling were ice blue like the console room. In _her_ room, she had comforting burgundy lamps and a tan bedspread with golden accent lights. Perfect for unwinding and sleep.

This whole situation, was just freezing her from the inside out.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked.

She sighed and opened the door. The frail man stood there, looking at her sympathetically. She didn't like that.

"Talk about it?" she asked. "Do you have a hundred and eight years to cover everything that I'm thinking?"

"As it happens, I do," he replied. "Please let me come in. You need a friend."

She stood aside and let Jack hobble past. He slowly made his way to the blue bedspread and sat down with the groan of an elderly man.

"When you say talk about _it_, what do you mean?" she asked him.

"I just spoke to the Doctor," he said. "He told me what happened."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "So he told you that…"

"He came about half an inch from raping you. Yes."

A horrible shiver came over Martha then. Jack had said the "r" word, the one she hadn't allowed herself to think.

"You're very blunt."

"Just trying to get to the point. He described it with many more words than he needed."

"TheDoctor does everything with more words than he needs."

"Okay, so I don't need anymore details from you. Just… is it true, or an exaggeration?"

"He wasn't exaggerating. So, I suppose he sent you to say he's sorry."

"No, he doesn't know I came to see you, and frankly, it's none of his business. Besides, you already know he's sorry," Jack argued. "You know the Doctor, Martha. He carries so much pain around, but he does a lot of good, and he never wants to hurt anyone. But he gets carried away, especially where _you_ are concerned."

"So you came to make excuses for him."

"No, I wouldn't presume. Again, though, I'd wager you're doing plenty of that yourself."

She began to pace. "You're right. Damn it! I can't help it, it's a survival mechanism!"

"I'm not judging!" Jack insisted. "I understand completely."

"I've spent the last half hour thinking about the hundreds of great things I've seen him do, and weighing them against a single bad thing that he _tried_ to do, and didn't succeed… and I'm not even sure he _tried_ to rape me, or wanted to," she spat, the words getting stuck in her mouth. "I think it was the world's worst example of getting caught in the moment. I said I loved him, and it's like he got enveloped in this cloud, and then couldn't see forward or backwards or sideways, just what was right in front of him. I don't want to believe that he could really have…"

She shuddered. She couldn't keep out the image of what might have happened if she hadn't pushed with everything she had and rolled them to the floor. The important thing was that as soon as the Doctor got a good knock, he backed off and was appalled at himself… but what if?

"I don't know if he could have, Martha," he confessed. "He's a powerful guy. He's twice your size, and _highly_ emotional. But he's also a benevolent…"

"Yes, Jack, the Doctor is one of the good guys, I know that. I know, okay?"

"Did you really say you loved him?" Jack asked, almost at a whisper.

"Yes," she admitted.

"Do you?"

"Yes. I love _the Doctor. _I love the Doctor I know. _My _Doctor. But here's the thing: I don't think he's the right Doctor at all."

"Interesting theory."

"Well, you can say I've gone mental if you like. You've probably noticed that I'm in pretty much a perpetual state of confusion today."

"It had come to my attention."

"I don't know you, I have no idea how you came to be in the TARDIS, and as far as I'm concerned, we met _today_."

Jack nodded. "Okay. What else seems confusing to you?"

"The TARDIS is the wrong colour on the inside. It's supposed to be brown and gold, not blue and silver. The console is supposed to be a mess; this one is too clean! The Doctor would _never_ send me into a huge, guarded complex on a rescue mission like that on my own, without giving me any information. We do everything together, unless we get separated somehow! But you seemed to think that the way we tried to rescue the Loeschen was totally normal!"

"It was," he told her.

"And the Doctor isn't supposed to…" she sighed. Pain welled up within her chest and she pushed it back down again.

"He isn't supposed to what?"

"Love me. He isn't supposed to love me. Jack, the way I remember 1913," she said, stopping. "I confessed to John Smith that I loved the Doctor, not the reverse. I was trying to convince him to change back, and I got caught up in the emotion of it, and it just came out before I could stop it."

"That's how you remember it?"

"Yes! But clearly, the Doctor remembers it differently!"

Jack looked away from her. "Martha, I don't know what to say. If you feel like something's wrong, we're going to need the Doctor to sort it out. I sure as hell can't. I don't have any idea what could have caused this, not to mention… at this point, I can barely stand. I've been out of bed for four hours, and I'm freaking exhaused."

She sighed. "I don't know if I can be around him right now."

_And I'm not sur e if I trust him to tell me the truth._

"You have every right to feel that way, Martha," the Doctor's voice said from the bedroom door. She couldn't see his face, but could see the shape and colour of the blue suit. "But let me help you. Because you're right. Something is wrong."

* * *

They left the media room together.

"Why are we going back to the console room?" asked Martha.

"Oh, I have some things to work out," the Doctor answered. He all but skipped down the hall, his white trainers squeaking on the brown marble floor.

"Are we going to try again with the Loeschen?"

"Not just now," he told her. "We have to get everything back to normal first."

She followed him to the control panel, and he switched on the display screen.

"Ugh, Doctor," she commented, looking at the console. "This is a mess! What happened? What's with the pieces of foam taped to the toggles? And why is there a sledgehammer here?"

"All in good time, my tactful friend," he said to her, staring at the screen. "Now, do you remember feeling a ripple of some kind? Just a few hours ago, it would have been."

"Yeah. I passed out in front of the cathedral, and woke up here… with the gold," she said, gesturing at the walls.

He turned the screen to face her and pointed to some numbers. "Well, luckily the TARDIS was in the vicinity at the time and was able to take some measurements. As you can see here, most likely it was a puncture current, literally the reverberation through reality when a hole gets punched through it."

"Through reality?"

"Yep."

"But you told me that what happened at Canary Wharf had made it impossible to do that. All of the walls between realities were, like, hermetically sealed, weren't they?"

"Yes, but I think this is different. I'm not talking about just jumping back and forth between alternative realities, Martha. I'm talking about Mirror Worlds that get _created_ as… well, as their own kind of reverb."

"A Mirror? Something that appears to be the same, but upon closer inspection, is actually pretty much the opposite?"

"_Pretty much_ the opposite. It's never exactly. When a certain type of disturbance happens, Mirror Worlds pop up."

"What kind of disturbance?"

"A dimensional blast would have to happen, and a bloody big one at that," he said, slumping down on the seat, fondling the hair on the back of his head. "In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it was the breach at Canary Wharf slamming shut. Sealed one thing, knocked another thing loose. Like when you shut a door too hard and a picture comes down off the wall."

"So... possibly when Canary Wharf happened, the dimensions were closed to one another, _except_ that the impact created a Mirror World."

"Yeah, like it knocked one reality off-kilter and left an imperfect imprint just… you know, like three inches to the left. So to speak."

"Then, someone punched a hole between the Mirror World and this one, and caused that rippling thing?"

"Yes."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I think you're from the Mirror World," he told her. "Or I am. And I think that the hole-punching caused you to get switched, somehow, with the Martha Jones from this world. Becaue frankly, love, I don't know _you_ at all."

She stared at him in disbelief for a few seconds, then conceded, "Well, that certainly would explain a lot."

"It certainly would."

"This TARDIS is very, very strange," Martha said. "It's all glowy!"

"And the Martha I know would never have just run off like you did earlier."

"The console is always clean."

"And in my world, I'm not the one with the crush," he offered, looking at her sideways.

"Really?" she asked him.

"Really. It's you."

"I'm smitten with _you_?"

"Yep. I was just playing along before, so I could find out more about what you know of me. And you don't know me very well, I'm finding."

"So, a version of Martha who's smitten with you is currently cooling her heels in the TARDIS with _my_ Doctor. That ought to be interesting."

"Indeed."

"She'll never want to leave!"

"Well, maybe. But Mirror Worlds are tricky. Maybe he's different enough from me that Martha doesn't like him."

"I don't know. Not understanding what she sees in you makes it hard for me to say," Martha said. "No offence."

"Er, none taken," he muttered.

"What about Jack Harkness in this world?" she asked.

"He's a friend of mine, but I haven't seen him in a while. He doesn't travel with us."

"Wow. This is amazing." She walked round the console once, thinking. "But wait. If one of us was from a world that was _just_ created a year ago, wouldn't we know it?"

"Not really," he told her. "The Mirror World would _feel _like it has always been here, and share a history with the original world, only sort of… opposite-slash-askew. It's brand new and volatile, but feels old and permanent."

"So which world is the original one, yours or mine?" she asked, stopping in front of him.

"There's no way to know."

"Well, that's disturbing," she said.


	9. Chapter 9

NINE

"May I come in?" the Doctor asked. "I know you said not to…"

"Just a minute," she said. "Wait there."

She shuffled into her walk-in closet, hoping against hope that the contents were at least somewhat similar to the wardrobe she was used to. She found that it was, more or less. She located a pair of jeans, peeled off the black velvet trousers with the ripped zip. She couldn't stand to wear such a blatant reminder of the incident any longer. She pulled on the denim and gave a sigh, feeling comfy. In denim, she could run and jump and feel herself. She slipped her feet into some flip-flops and stepped out into the bedroom. Jack and the Doctor were exactly where she'd left them. They had been silent while she was gone – at least as far as she could tell.

"Okay, come in," she said to the Doctor, without real hesitation. Even though she didn't trust this Doctor, she wasn't afraid he'd try a repeat performance of what had happened on the sofa.

He came under the blue lights into her room, and his face took shape out of the silhouette.

"So what's the what, Doctor?" Jack asked. "What's going on with Martha's head?"

"Do you remember the ripple?" the Doctor asked her.

"Yeah, outside the cathedral. I remember. I woke up here."

"Mm, I was afraid you'd say that," the Doctor said. "Martha, there is no _here_. _Here _is the TARDIS, with us. It's where you've always been. We did visit Tim Lattimer in 1985, and there was a ripple, but everything that's happened since then, I'm afraid it's your mind playing you tricks."

"Lovely," she sighed, sitting down beside Jack.

"I'm still working out what caused it, but that ripple effect was from sort of temporal disturbance," he told her. "Sometimes it happens because someone is time-travelling, and they're being very clumsy about it. It can cause a seam through time to become manifest and sort of reverberate through parts of the universe. Unfortunately, if you're caught in one of the epicentres, it can give you a kind of temporary amnesia."

"I remember you," Martha said. "I remember the TARDIS, our time together, all of that. It's just Jack and the blue lights. I haven't _completely_ lost it!"

"No, but that's what a temporal disturbance ripple does. It just messes with you a little bit, it doesn't erase your memory completely."

"Okay, but you were with me when it happened," she pointed out. "Why didn't it affect you?"

"I'm a Time Lord," he told her. "It's in my DNA – I can withstand temporal disturbances. My body likes them. Temporal disturbances are practically in our blood. It's who we are as a race."

_Good answer, Doctor. Touché._

"And Jack?"

"He was inside the TARDIS. He was protected."

"I see." Then, already knowing what he would say, she asked, "When does it wear off, then?"

"It may never," he told her. "You'll just have to readjust to the things you weren't familiar with. The TARDIS, Jack… us."

"Us."

"You and me."

She sighed. In her world, there was no "us." And to her great surprise, she missed that world.

"Guys, do you think you could just leave me for a bit? I'm really fine, I'm not going to break… I just need to be by myself, okay?" she requested.

"Sure," Jack said. He stood up slowly and stumbled toward the door. The Doctor met him halfway and helped him out of the room.

Once the door was shut, she let out a huge sigh, looking at the place where the Doctor had disappeared. "What is he on about?" she asked herself aloud. "Temporal amnesia."

She _knew_ that this was not some amnesia thing. She was (almost) a doctor herself, she knew that amnesia victims feel huge swathes of information missing, lost time, and a certain cloudiness. She was razor sharp. She was certain of the details of her life, the colour of the inside of the TARDIS, her relationship with her Doctor, the absence of Jack Harkness. _This _life was unnatural.

Now, granted, the Doctor had said that the temporal disturbance had caused this particular amnesia, but she was fairly certain he'd been covering. How convenient that something that _only he_ could understand had caused something bad to happen to her! Her symptoms were different because it's _time energy_. The malady is selective because it's _time energy_. And only a Time Lord had perspective over that, and only one Time Lord existed, that they knew of.

It felt wrong to feel this way, not trusting him. His forcing himself on her notwithstanding, something in her bones told her that the Doctor was not _her_ Doctor. She'd know that even without the ugly episode in the media room. Love for him had become a part of her, indelibly imprinted on her soul. She _knew_ him, could feel him in her veins, oozing from her pores.

_This is not him._

She sat on the edge of the bed. Parallel worlds had all been closed off when the incident happened at Canary Wharf. She was sure the Doctor, _her _Doctor, had told her that much. She trusted that information. But that being true, what the hell was _this_? A place where another Doctor knocks about in the TARDIS with a different companion, loves Martha Jones, is aggressive and careless at unpredictable turns, and lies about the phenomena infecting his friends? Had to be a different universe – but how?

_Maybe I'm in a coma, and this is all a nightmare? It's not the same as amnesia. It wouldn't be real, so it would all feel constant and a little off-kilter by nature. But then, is the Doctor himself part of the fantasy, or just _this _Doctor? Am I asleep in a hospital somewhere in England where my family sits vigil, or in the real TARDIS with the real Doctor, while he waits for me to awaken from a mystical catatonia?_

_Wow. My life is bizarre._

_But… wait a minute. What if I just told him I know that he's lying? What if I said I'd forgive his lie if he'd just tell me the truth? After all, I'm in a world where the Doctor is in love with me – and the man at the core is still the same. Yes, he got a little scary for a few minutes, but who's to say that _my_ Doctor wouldn't have done as well? Maybe the Doctor, in any reality, is just aggressive and lusty; he likes it rough. I never had the chance to find out in _my _world. And who are we kidding? Under different circumstances, perhaps on any other day, I'd have let him do what he wanted. It wouldn't have been a question of forcing me because I'd have been a willing participant. I _was _willing until I talked myself out of it…_

_If the Doctor and I start from scratch, come at it with open minds and open hearts, I could live here. It wouldn't be a bad thing…_

She stood up and headed back to the console room, determined to make the best of the situation.

Jack was sitting in the black leather seat, his feet extended on some sort of reclining device in front of him. His eyes were shut, and he was covered with a blanket. His finger was resting in a gadget that seemed to be taking his vitals, and the Doctor was monitoring him out of the corner of his eye. He was circling around the console, tightening bolts with a large wrench. She had never seen the Doctor do anything quite so organised. Usually, he gave the console a good bop with a hammer, then talked to the time rotor until it behaved.

She looked around the cold blue room and sighed.

"Doctor," she said, marching across the room. She wanted to tell him what she knew. She wanted to say that she forgave him for his transgression, for his lie, and if he'd come clean, the two of them could start anew. She wanted to tell him she loved him with every molecule in her body, and she almost wished she'd given in to his advances earlier so that they could have shared beautiful moment together, and avoided the whole ugly attempted-rape scene.

But when he looked up at her, the bent in his eye was totally different from anything she was used to. It was a difference she'd noticed when she'd first awakened in this strange TARDIS – how could she have _ever_ thought he was her friend? Clearly, this was a different man.

He was playing mind games with her about mind games. He'd almost crossed an irrevocable line with her, and now he nearly had _her _taking the blame for it!

_What do I mean I wish I had let him, so we could have had… please! Martha Jones, shame on you!_

"Doctor," she said, forcefully. "I do not have amnesia. I'm not mad or delusional or comatose – there's nothing wrong with my brain. And I don't know who you are, but I want _my_ Doctor back."

His face fell. The jig was up. His gaze on her was now as cold as the console room itself, and his dark eyes bore into her.

"He doesn't love you," he told her.

"No," she agreed. "But I don't love _you_."

He gasped a little, and tried to cover the fact. But she heard it.

"You are not my Doctor, this is not my TARDIS, this is not my world," she said. "And I don't know why you're lying to me about it, but I want you to stop. Right now."

Jack had awakened as soon as Martha had begun speaking. His eyes darted back and forth between Martha and the Doctor. "Whoa, boy," he heaved, dread in his eyes.


	10. Chapter 10

TEN

The Doctor was in agreeance that their situation was, indeed disturbing. No-one could be sure which world was the original and which was the mirror. Not even the Doctor himself could tell. All of time and space at his disposal, but Mirror Worlds were an anomaly. If he was part of a Mirror World, he'd feel all things _within _his world, but not the artificial nature of the world itself.

Such were his melancholy thoughts, but then his ears perked up. "What's that sound?" he asked.

"I don't hear anything," Martha answered.

"You don't hear that?" he said, pressing his ear to the edge of the console and sliding round it, trying to find the source.

"What does it sound like?"

The Doctor made a noise. "_Wong-wong. Wong-wong._" His voice went high-pitched and comical.

Martha thought about it. "Is it sonar? Like, at a frequency only Time Lords can hear?"

He looked at her with wide eyes. "Some type of radar signal? Only Time Lords… because it's coming from somewhere in time! Or at least from a time energy-wrapped source!"

He dragged the screen over once more. "Cardiff!"

"Oh. The rift," she nodded.

He smirked. "Yeah. Well done, you."

He typed in a command, and the whole TARDIS rang from the inside out. It was a pleasant sound, like a moistened finger tracing rings round the rim of a crystal glass. "What is that?" she asked.

"I'm sending a sonar signal back. Someone meant that signal for me," he told her.

"But… what if it's someone bad?"

"Doesn't give away our total position, just lets them know we can hear. Gives them a frequency to use to communicate with us."

Martha came round to the screen and looked over his shoulder. She saw a line of orange numbers pop up. "What's that?"

"Coordinates," he said. "Someone wants us to land."

"What if it's a trap?"

"Then we'll use our good looks and wits to wiggle our way out."

She shrugged. "Oh. Okay."

The TARDIS came to a halt somewhere unknown. The Doctor opened the door. The place seemed deserted, but a familiar logo caught his eye. A T-shaped figure made of interlocking hexagons.

"Torchwood," he growled. "I should have known. Get back inside, Martha. We're leaving."

"No, please," a voice said. It came from somewhere below, somewhere behind where the TARDIS was parked. "Doctor, don't go."

The sentient vessel heaved in protest.

"No way," Martha whispered. "Is that…?"

"Jack?" the Doctor said.

Captain Jack Harkness, six feet tall, robust, blue-eyed and gorgeous, sauntered out from behind the TARDIS. He was dressed in a blue military shirt, braces, combat boots and a pistol at his belt. The police box shook as he got closer.

The Doctor extended the sonic screwdriver, and the TARDIS disappeared. In response to the strange looks from his friends, he said, "I put her up in the Plass. She needs a good recharge."

"So," Jack said, standoffishly. "Looking good. Pin-stripes suit you."

"Oh yeah, you haven't seen me in a while, have you? The face!" the Doctor responded.

"And your friend?" He smiled suavely at Martha.

"Oh my God," Martha sighed. "You're… oh my God!"

"Captain Jack Harkness," he said, dazzling her with beautiful teeth and bright eyes. "And who are you?"

She opened her mouth to respond, but there was a delay as she further marvelled at the healthful look of her sickly friend Jack. "I'm Martha Jones. I can't believe I'm seeing you like this! You look so strong, so… oh! I'm so glad to see you!" She fell forward and threw her arms around his neck.

Jack, of course, had no objection. He laughed and hugged her back, though he had absolutely no idea why she was so moved. The Doctor sighed. He wondered whether he should tell Jack the whole story… but there was so much to cover.

Martha let go, and by the time she did, she was in tears. She wiped them away, as the Doctor asked Jack, "Did you call for me?"

"Yeah," Jack confessed.

"Time sonar?"

"Eh, sort of. I've been trying to find you for a really, really long time. It took… well, something very weird to occur before I achieved the means to do so."

"Torchwood-issue technology?" the Doctor asked, crossing his arms over his chest authoritatively. "How could you? After everything they did, everything I lost? We lost?"

"Later, Doctor. I promise, I'll tell you everything. And I have loads of questions for you. Right now, there's something you need to know," Jack told him. "Come with me."

He led them across a short bridge and down a metal staircase to the base of a giant column. Martha and the Doctor looked up at the shiny glass structure. It stretched up well over thirty feet, and seemed to disappear beyond the ceiling of the facility they were in.

"Is that the water tower?"asked Martha.

"Yep," said Jack. "It connects the rift with… well, us."

The Doctor pulled his glasses from his breast pocket and put them on. He squinted and ducked under one of the guardrails to approach the tower. He was fixated on a display of readings toward the bottom.

The Doctor looked closely. "Blimey!" he said after a few seconds.

"I know!" exclaimed Jack.

"What?" asked Martha.

"It's a viewing loop!" the Doctor said. "That is completely mad! It's been ages since I've seen one of these!"

"Yeah?" asked Jack. "Well, all we knew was some kind of energy was coming out of the rift and it was being directed at something. I only realised it was you after Toshiko – our computer guru – analysed the destination coordinates."

"She worked that out?" asked the Doctor. "Clever girl."

"Tell me about it. She built a sonic device from scratch and scared the hell out of the government. But the point is, the coordinates led to a temporally unstable , spatially inconsistent vehicle. After further analysis, which took, oh, nigh on four months, we got an actual shape. It was a police box."

"So…" Martha said, squinting. "You used the same destination coordinates to send out that sonar signal to the TARDIS, yeah? Otherwise, how the hell would you find the Doctor?"

"Exactly. Been looking for him for over a hundred years." To the Doctor he said, "She's sharp. Where'd you find her?"

"On the moon," the Doctor answered offhandedly. "So… someone's been watching me. Watching us. In the TARDIS, for at least the last four months."

"Watching?" asked Martha. "So a viewing loop is like a surveillance system?"

"Yeah," said the Doctor, pulling the panel off the wall and beginning to fiddle with the wires. He sonicked something for a few seconds, and stopped. "Only this is very sophisticated. Usually you can only surveille across time. This can cross dimensions and time."

"That's creepy," Jack commented.

"Very," said the Doctor. "But the point is, Martha, you don't belong here. Something, or rather someone, brought you here, and stole away _my_ Martha. It wasn't just an accident."

"Come again?" asked Jack.

"Mirror World," the Doctor said. "This Martha is from a mirror world."

"Oh. Is that why you seem to know me?" he asked her.

She nodded, smiling.

"And even more to the point, Martha, whoever did this used the rift," the Doctor continued. "And I now know how he or she did it! I can reverse it!"

"Okay," she said.

He looked at her seriously. "Are you all right with that?"

She put one hand on her hip and sighed. "What would you do if I said I wasn't all right with it?"

He thought about it for a moment. "I don't know. I suppose I'd reverse the surveillance and see if my Martha was happy there… then if so, I'd explore the idea of keeping you. But I'd have to be sure that she…"

"Don't trouble yourself, Doctor," she said softly. "I'm perfectly all right with going back the way things were. My Doctor's longing gazes are irritating, but… he's my Doctor. I do love him in my own way. My very abstract way."

"Good," he said. He stood up straight and pushed his hands into his pockets. His demeanour grew graver still. "And my Martha… I feel like I'm just now getting to know her, now that I know… I want a second chance with her, I think. Maybe I can make things right."

"Okay then," she said. "I guess this is goodbye, in a way, Doctor. Jack, it was nice seeing you so robust. I'll keep this memory forever. Honestly!"

The Doctor had turned his attention back to the wires.

"It was nice meeting you, Martha Jones," Jack said. "Maybe I'll like the other you just as well… but I doubt it." He winked at her, and she giggled. She was in disbelief. A flirty Jack Harkness simply was not in her realm of thinking!

"Okay," said the Doctor. "I think I can get this thing going. Whoever did this used the rift to look through realities like through gauze, then used that frailty to punch a hole. Then they must have used some sort a DNA homing device to extract my Martha, while sort of tossing this Martha into the hole. DNA homing devices are a dime a dozen…"

"They are?" asked Martha.

"Sure. It homes in on you and sort of teleports you away. Really easy science, actually."

"Whoa."

"But if I just do this," he sonicked something. "That ought to do it. The hole is already punched. All I have to do is cross these two copper wires and I can use _their_ DNA device to find my Martha again. That's what's brilliant about Mirror Worlds – everything can be reversed! Martha, you… I'll have to toss you back in."

"Literally?"

"No," he said. "But the closer you stand to the rift, the easier it will be for you."

She ducked under the guardrail and joined him on the lower level.

"But here's the problem," he said. "I have to close that hole. In fact, while I'm at it, I have to repair all the damage that's been done. It's kind of my job."

"Okay. Which means what?" she wanted to know.

"Well, the Mirror World was created as a result of one kind of big ripple effect, probably when the breach at Canary Wharf slammed shut. That means it's my fault. It's not meant to be anyway, but now… it's my fault. I have to undo it."

"You can do that?"

"I can. I'm going to. I can, again, reverse what this guy did to punch the hole, turn the ripping agent into a patching agent. I can ramp the patching agent up to eleven. It should spread, then, seep into the cracks to repair the shatter from a year ago…"

"…and the Mirror World will cease to exist."

"Once the switch is made, yes."

"But you don't know which world is the original, and which is the Mirror."

"No. It could be yours, it could be mine," he said sadly. "There's now way to tell. So one of us will… disappear from existence in a few minutes."

"Wow. Are you sure you have to do that? The life you end may be your own."

"I know," he said. "But it's all very unstable. Both worlds are in danger as long as the Mirror Exists. Both are more vulnerable to attack, to void seepage and whole mess of other stuff that comes about when people and energies are spread to thin."

She sighed. "You're the Doctor, I guess."

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Okay, patching agent," he said, sonicking a white column that seemed to run through the tower like a blood vessel.

"What I don't get," Jack said. "Is why, if this guy or gal is so clever, they didn't see you coming. They've been watching you, they know what you can do…"

The Doctor seemed vexed by Jack's words.

"What's wrong?" Martha asked.

"Well… you know how I said I hadn't seen a viewing loop in a long time?" asked the Doctor.

"Yeah."

"It just occurred to me, I haven't seen one since my planet was destroyed. And the more I think of it, I didn't know that anyone other than a Time Lord knew how to do it. And this… this is sophisticated."

"So, maybe there are other Time Lords in the Mirror World," Jack said.

"No, there aren't," Martha said. "Even in our world, the Doctor is the last."

"And even at that… this is… this is cool, this viewing loop," he said. "Familiar almost. Rigged up in an ingenious way, exactly how I would have…" His eyes grew wide. He looked at Martha, and she realised it two seconds after he did.

"And he woudn't know that Jack works here because he's not been watching Jack, just watching us," Martha shouted. "There's no way he would know that anyone who's watching the rift is associated with you! In our world, Torchwood watches the rift, but they're enemies of the Doctor! That's why he didn't see you coming!"

"I need to know," the Doctor shouted. "Some sort of device has to be used to manipulate the rift. Even from the _inside_ I'm having to do some pretty creative things. If he doesn't have access to this panel, then he'll have…"

"Careful, Doctor, the opposing signal could be dangerous," Jack warned. "If someone's using some type of radiation probe or whatever, then…"

"It's not a radiation probe, it's…"

A spark came from within the panel and blew the Doctor backwards and off his feet.

"What was that?" she asked, helping him up off the floor.

"Feedback," he said. "The opposing signal came from my own sonic screwdriver."

"Make the switch, Doctor," Martha said. "I want to get back there. Now."

"Martha, if I were you, I would think twice before deciding to travel with him again," the Doctor warned.

"If I make it through this alive, I'll think twice about everything from now on. Believe me."

Martha stepped to the side and grabbed onto Jack's hand. They braced for the ripple effect as the Doctor touched the two copper wires together, and began the switch.


	11. Chapter 11

**You guys are freaking amazing, you readers. Thanks for all the support and ego-stroking you've given me! It's really a great thing to have so much love just for doing something I thoroughly enjoy!**

**Also, I'd like to say that I am amused by how many of you have brought up "Star Trek" ever since the Mirror World revelation came to light in my story!**

**Anyway, the story is starting to wind down... I'm predicting 13 chapters. And unlike SOME people, I'll not be expanding that to 506 (wink).**

* * *

ELEVEN

Jack was struggling to stand up. He'd been out of bed for an unusually long time today, and it had been an eventful few hours, but he was determined. "Martha," he panted. "What do you mean he's not your Doctor?"

"You worked it out," the Doctor muttered at her. "You're clever. It's what I love about you. What a nasty little paradox _that_ turned out to be."

She steeled her jaw. "That's right. Time's up. Tell me why you did this."

Jack's eyebrows went up and his eyes opened wide with shock. "_You_ did this?" he asked the Doctor. He got steady on his feet and took hold of a wooden cane which was leaning against his chair. He put his weight on it and waited for an answer.

"Isn't it obvious why?" the Doctor asked her, somewhat annoyed by her question.

"Just to get me here?" she asked, incredulous. "Seriously?"

"Are you really going to scold me for this?" he asked. "_You_, Miss I-Love-Him-To-Bits?"

"How the hell do you even know about that? And yes, I'm scolding you, you prat! Aren't you supposed to, like, regulate the laws of time and space, not break them?"

"I make the rules, Martha," he said, sanctimoniously. "There's no-one left."

"Wrong," she countered. "There's him. That guy who looks like you, but isn't you. Or better… you look like him but you aren't him. As far as I'm concerned _he_ makes the rules. You're just a cheap copy. Take me back to him _now_."

He took two steps toward her and narrowed his eyes. "Tell me one thing, Martha Jones, before you judge me. In your own world, would you not give anything, do anything, to be with him?"

She stared back into those familiar but painfully foreign eyes. "There is a lot that I would do to be with him. There is a lot that I would do just because he asked me to, even if it meant never… But manipulating people's lives without their knowledge? Dumping them in other realities? No way. Not even if I had that power."

"What the hell are you two talking about?" Jack shouted.

"Jack, sit down, you'll do yourself some damage," the Doctor said, offhandedly, not looking at his feeble friend. His eyes were fixed upon the woman he loved, whom he had violated and lied to and so grievously angered. He'd known she'd work it out eventually, but he'd hoped it wouldn't be so soon. He'd hoped it would be long enough that she'd be used to him, happy with their life together, their physical bond, and wouldn't want to return.

"Hey," Jack said. When the Doctor didn't respond, he took his cane and whacked the Doctor on the arm. "Hey! Don't treat me like a mental patient. Tell me what in the name of holy hell is going on!"

"Mirror World," the Doctor said. "Martha is from a Mirror World. Well, _this_ Martha. Our Martha has switched with her."

"Why?" Jack asked, his face distorted with disbelief. "Why would you even think about doing something like that?"

"I've been watching them," the Doctor answered, gazing at Martha. He grew very sad for a moment. "Let's just say, I thought she'd be happier here with me, than with him."

Jack looked at Martha sympathetically. "Oh, I see. You love him to bits," he said, repeating the Doctor's mocking words. Only, Jack wasn't mocking her; he could see her pain.

"Yes," she whispered, tears falling quietly. "But not this one. I want my gold and brown TARDIS with its messy old console. I want my dolt of an indifferent Doctor. He's a blunt instrument, but he's home."

"And I'm the cheap copy," the Doctor said scathingly. "Isn't that what you said?"

"The Doctor," she insisted. "The proper Doctor would _never_ do what you did! He's got… integrity! Common sense! Compassion! He doesn't just fuck around with reality whenever he wants something he can't have."

"I see. You know that do you, about your _proper_ Doctor?"

"Yes." She was certain. Whatever he was about to say, whatever poisonous bomb he was about to drop, she was sure of _this_.

"How do you know that I'm not the proper Doctor?" he asked. "You see, Martha, there is no way to tell which world is the original and which world is the Mirror. Maybe this is how it's supposed to be, and _he_ is the one who's screwed up. I'm the rebel and he's stagnant pond water. I'm the one who _takes_ what he wants, instead of waiting for it to fall back through a dimensional breach in Canary Wharf or in Norway or whatever. He just stumbles around from one planet or crisis or companion to the next. I actually bent the _fabric of reality!_ I saw something and grabbed at it, and to hell with the laws of time and bloody space!"

"Very admirable," she said flatly, burning sarcasm dripping from her voice.

"Martha, think about it. Would you rather have just on old bloke with two hearts, or a _Time Lord_?" He said those last two words with emphasis, to convey power, grandeur, fantasy.

"Call it whatever you like. But if the choice is between you and him, I choose him. I loved him even when he was human, and he wasn't any great prize then, believe me. You, I don't even _like_. Take me home."

He stared at her for a long while. Then, "No. You'll get used to me, I promise."

"Doctor," she said, stepping forward, taking his hand. "If you love me, you'll let me go home."

As she stared at his handsome face, it started to blur. His chin expanded to four times its normal size, as did his ears. His spiky hair went upward into a peak and wobbled like a belly dancer. His eyes elongated themselves and became distorted and discoloured…

"Oh, no you don't!" the Doctor shouted. He ran around the console and the TARDIS gears began to grind. He flipped eight or ten switches on the control board and let out a cry of frustration.

"Jack," she said, breathlessly. "Help me!"

She tried to turn and reach out to the man with the cane as she stumbled away from the Doctor, even knowing that there was nothing Jack could do for her. But then the rippling stopped.

"Ha!" cried the man in the blue suit. "Take that!" He beamed at Martha.

"Doctor, what are you doing?" asked Jack, clutching at his chest. "You're out of control!"

"I'm totally in control!" he yelled. "Behold, my doubting friends!"

"What do you want, a prize?" she asked. "You just stopped the ripple! My Doctor is trying to save me, and you're trying to keep me here against my will! How could you think I'd _possibly_ get used to you? How could you think…"

"Martha, please," he said. "Just give me a chance."

"Why should I?"

"Because…" he began, before the rippling interrupted him again. "Aaagh!" he cried out, running around the console a second time.

But now, Martha, dizzy as she was, knew what to expect. She had to act fast.

She turned toward Jack and yanked his finger out of the vitals monitor, much to his surprise. The machine was attached to an iron bar with four legs on wheels, for rolling it from room to room. Martha took the neck of the bar, right at the base where it was attached to the legs, in her right hand. She took the upper part of the bar in her left hand and turned the thing upside-down, cables and all.

The Doctor was busy thwarting his counterpart's attempts to bring back his Martha, and he was successful again, for the moment. The rippling stopped, but that gave Martha time to act. He buried his hands in his hair and shouted at the time rotor, "How the hell is he doing this? Does he have access to a rift manipulator, or what?"

He never received an answer to that question. Martha barrelled at him with the iron rod. He saw it coming, but he was so stunned, he couldn't stop it. One of the legs came down upon his head, and he was out cold within seconds.

"Holy shit!" Jack shouted. "Martha, you killed him!"

"No, I didn't. Besides, even if I did, he'll regenerate," she answered hastily. "Maybe he'll be a nicer guy the next time." She knelt at the Doctor's side and felt his pulse, confirming that the Time Lord was not, in fact, dead. Just unconscious.

"Jeez!" Jack cried. "Oh, I'm going to need about eight weeks' bedrest after this."

"Jack," she said, coming towards him. "When the ripple comes again, I'm going to leave. But I wanted to say, it's been really nice knowing you. This would have been utter hell without you. With you, it was just… unpleasant."

"What am I like you world?" he asked, smiling slightly.

"I've never met you over there," she said. "Remember, I didn't know you when I first got here?"

"Ah yes," he said. He sighed and sat back down in his chair. "That was only a few hours ago. It feels like an eternity."

"Tell me about it," she agreed. "I feel like I've been away from…"

"Your Doctor?" he asked, finishing her thought.

"Yes. Feels like ages. Any time away from him feels like ages."

"You sound like him, when he talks about you," Jack told her, patting her on the arm. "And, it was nice knowing you, as well, Martha. But it's all right for me, since even when you leave, I'll get to see you again immediately."

"And I'll have to say goodbye for now," she said sadly. "I'm so glad you were here. And I'm glad you're here for _them._ I think they need a buffer. He's a force to be reckoned with."

"So's she," Jack agreed. "That's something you've got in common with her."

Martha smiled, and took his hand. "Thanks."

And that's when the ripple came again.


	12. Chapter 12

**Hooray! Finally able to update! Two more chapters to go... enjoy!**

* * *

TWELVE

When the ripple stopped, and the water tower at Torchwood stopped making the world blurry, Martha cried, "What's going on?"

"He's countering me," the Doctor said, hands on hips, looking up into the rift. "The clever bastard."

"Have you forgotten he's as clever as you?" asked Jack with a chuckle.

"Maybe a little," the Doctor answered, grudgingly. Within seconds, he was diving back into the mess of wires and lights and electronic blips, and was in elbow-deep. Martha and Jack could hear him sonicking the rift manipulator, creating another ripple, which would switch the two versions of Martha, and be rid of the Mirror World for good. "Here goes nothing."

"What d'you mean, _here goes nothing_?" Martha asked.

"I mean, what I just did there, he's going to see that coming too," the Doctor shouted at her, now panting and exasperated. "He's going to keep fighting me until one of us drops dead from exhaustion."

"Way to fight, Doctor," Jack commented. "Keep that positive air!"

"Oh, shut up, Jack," the Doctor shot back.

Because the Doctor was right. The second ripple began to blur their world, and force them to grab onto something for purchase, but this effect was countered as well. This time, the Doctor could say nothing, except give a good solid cry of frustration.

He stood staring at the hole in the manipulator, teeth bared and chest heaving. He stood with his feet apart and his arms held out from the sides of his body, clutching the sonic screwdriver like King Arthur clutched Excalibur.

"Doctor…" Martha began.

"Shh," Jack warned. Martha thought it best to take that advice.

Anger coursed through the Time Lord's veins, though it was not the usual type of anger. It was turned inwards, even though he knew that none of this was his own fault, technically. But, dealing with _himself_ as a literal adversary was a new phenomenon, and inevitably, he was recognising his own dark side in this work. He was being faced head-on by the twisted, powerful, selfish shadow of his mighty brain. No Mirror version of anyone ever existed without presenting qualities that the counterpart doesn't already possess. It's just a question of how each individual version chooses to use those qualities, and which qualities actually dominate the personality. Just as a mirror gives you the opposite effect of something you already appear to have.

Martha, for instance; both versions were beautiful and intelligent. And his own Martha did have a reckless, fiercely independent, sardonic side that the Mirror Martha clearly expressed more freely. But it was her sweetness and compassion and love that shone through most of the time, giving her occasional recklessness a real purpose and her independence a clever advantage. Jack had in him the "decay" that Mirror Martha had discussed, ever since being doused with energy from the Time Vortex. He was alive indefinitely, was aging, albeit incredibly slowly, and all of that gave him a massive weakness. The Doctor could see the fatigue in his old friend's eyes, akin to his own, but a fatigue in knowing that he had little control over his own destiny, and that the world, and everyone he loved within it, would continue to crumble before his very eyes.

The Doctor, no matter where he was in the dimensional scheme of things, was brilliant and passionate, and inevitably, displayed the qualities and abilities of a Time Lord. But his Mirror counterpart chose to let his passion run amok and use his brilliance to abate it, and his Time Lord essence became something that the Doctor despised. He had always resolved never to become this way; he would never manipulate the fabric of reality for his own personal gain, just because he _could_. There were Time Lords who did that, and he had always fought to keep them in their rightful place.

And that's what made the Mirror Doctor so infuriating. He let himself be what the Doctor wouldn't dare.

And he didn't dare because then, what would the universe become? How was anyone supposed to have faith in a Doctor like that? Sure, he'd save planets and rescue civilisations, but how could everyone be sure he wouldn't then suck them through a portal and suspend them in time, to protect them? Or just as an experiment? Or because it might help another, more "important" civilisation survive? How could anyone trust someone quite so volatile? He, himself, could be a dodgy guy sometimes, but he had certain lines he dared not cross. How could Martha even bear to travel with him? How could she…

…love him?

Well, that was the thing. Martha didn't love the Mirror Doctor, and who could blame her?

But Martha, _his_ Martha, loved _him_. She had faith in him. She knew that he'd always come through, she trusted him to do the right thing. She trusted him even through the filter of John Smith, to punch his way through the guise and save them all.

And this gave him strength. It always had, he realised. He found himself calming, his hearts slowing a bit, his reason returning.

_My Martha has faith in me. And I have faith in her. I chose her because she chose me because I chose her… we are a team. We do what's right. We know each other, backwards and forwards._

_I know what she has to do, and she knows it too._

"Come on, Martha," he said aloud. "Take him out… let me get through to you! Help me get you back!"

"What?" Martha asked.

"I wasn't talking to you," he said offhandedly, thrusting his hand once more into the manipulator. "Hold on for round three!"

Jack and Martha looked at each other with confusion, and grabbed onto each other once more. The ripple came again, and this time, it didn't stop. The world spun and swam, and Martha's voice rang out with something like fear, but not fear.

"Doctor!" she cried out. "Goodbye! I hope you don't cease to exist!"

"Goodbye," he said, in a normal tone. "I agree." He had almost forgotten that this whole fiasco _could_ end in total obliteration for him. He was confident that his world was the original, but he didn't know why – he could just feel it in his Time Lord guts. But, he was glad that Mirror Martha didn't know what he thought.

The swirling and swishing began to blow in his ears, and all sound dissipated into a loud din of rushing white noise. He could no longer hear his friends, nor the rift, nor anything other than reality breaking, turning itself inside out. He tried to keep his eyes open, but he did not succeed. A wind was making it impossible, so he simply contented himself not to get carried off his feet, by holding onto a railing. He waited.

The phenomenon did not die down, it simply stopped. It was as though all the air in the world got sucked into a funnel and died.

And when the Doctor opened his eyes, Martha and Jack were standing where he'd left them, holding hands for dear life. Martha was wearing a black velvet jacket, a pink camisole and jeans. Jack was Jack.

The two of them opened their eyes a few split seconds after the Doctor. When Martha saw Jack, she let go of his hand abruptly, and took two steps away.

"Oh my God," she breathed.

"It's me," he said. "How've you been?"

"You… wow!"

"Yeah," Jack chuckled. "Talk about _déjà vu_. I'm…"

"Jack Harkness," she finished.

"Yep. Healthy as a horse."

She smiled and hugged him.

"Hello," said the Doctor as soon as Martha let go. "Nice outfit."

Martha looked to her right and saw the Doctor taking tentative steps toward her. _Her_ proper Doctor dressed in brown, sympathetic eyes, none of the mania showing through. This was a man who would never manipulate her, lie to her or force her to do anything she didn't want to. But she'd do anything for him anyway, because _this_ was the man she loved. She was sure of it. Relief flooded her and made her swoon a bit. She opened her mouth and let out a little squeak before she fell forward into his arms.

They squeezed tight. Martha held her breath, afraid to speak, for fear that if she changed anything about this moment, it would be lost. He would be lost. She thought she might cry or pass out or explode. She just let herself be enveloped by him, and pressed in as though she belonged just _there._

"Are you all right?" he whispered, kissing the top of her head.

"I've been better," she managed to croak out. "But I'm going to be okay. Now."

"Yes, you are," he told her.

She pulled away, and looked him over. "It's _so_ good to see you. You have no idea how good."

"You too," he agreed. "Though I reckon you had a rougher go of it than I did."

She broke eye contact. "I reckon I did."

"He's… a little scary?" he asked.

"A lot scary."

"Did you… how did you stop him blocking the reverberation?"

"I knocked him out with Jack's vitals monitor."

"Good girl," the Doctor hissed at her, smiling.

A silence hung in the air for a few long moments while Martha and the Doctor took each other in.

Finally, he asked, "Weren't you wearing trousers to match that jacket? What's with the jeans?"

She pulled in a quick breath to keep the tears from falling. "Oh, Doctor. It's not a story you're going to like hearing."


	13. Chapter 13

**Final chapter, folks - I hope that you find a sense of closure and are not too nonplussed by the ending! I think it's good for friends (especially friends who live in tight quarters and spend most of their time with only each other) to talk about their feelings and issues, even if it's painful, even if it doesn't mean that anything really gets resolved. I think that this conversation rebuilds trust between them, and oddly, begins to give Martha the upper hand.**

**Thank you for reading, as always. You have been FANTASTIC! Something new is on the horizon soon... Enjoy!**

* * *

THIRTEEN

Jack had offered to help rescue the Loeschen, but the Doctor and Martha didn't feel that they would need him. With a plan at hand and two compatible minds working the complex, the two of them made quick work of infiltrating the prison, teleporting the creature into the TARDIS, and negotiating its return to its home planet. From the time they dematerialized from Torchwood until they returned, knackered, to the console room in the end, it was four hours. They were given a large supply of Micellite Mushrooms, universally known to be quite tasty and to cure several ailments, as thanks.

"Now what?" asked Martha as they sauntered back toward the controls, having sorted out their mushroom crates.

"Well, I'd like to know what happened to you," he said. "You know, on the other side."

"Doctor," she sighed. "Do you really need to know? I'd rather just put it behind me."

He paused and regarded her carefully, leaning on a railing. "He did something to you."

She nodded. "He… well, he sort of didn't mean to, but that's kind of what makes it so scary."

"He didn't mean to? And that's the scary part?"

"Yeah! Because he was out of control! Cold and calculating I can handle. Lovesick and unpredictable…" she said, her voice breaking a little. She swallowed, getting her breathing into check. "That's a whole different story."

Her words penetrated him.

_Lovesick and unpredictable. _

_She came back wearing a different pair of trousers than when she'd left, and something about that fact had reduced her to tears earlier, when he'd asked about it. Then she called him "lovesick and unpredictable."_

Suddenly, a glimmer of understanding crossed his features, and Martha saw it, and smiled mirthlessly. His eyes lit up and went dark all at once, and a tightening occurred throughout his body. He knew what the Mirror Doctor had done.

"Martha, listen," he said, crossing a short space to her. He put his arms out, hesitating to touch her. But she didn't flinch, so he put his hands on her shoulders. "If there's trauma, you really need to talk about it."

"It's not so much trauma…" she told him weakly.

"That world has ceased to exist," he explained. "There is now no-one left alive who knows the truth, except for you. And that's a huge burden to carry. Tell me. Or if not, then tell Jack. Tell someone."

She smiled again, feebly. "I'll tell you," she said. "But you already know."

His face fell into sadness. "I wish I didn't."

"It's not as bad as you think," she assured him. "He didn't… you know."

"He didn't, what?"

"He didn't succeed. He tried, and failed."

"He failed?" the Doctor asked. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned on the console.

"Yes. I got him to stop before…" she told him. "It's how I knew he wasn't you."

He almost burst into tears himself then, so overwhelmed was he with relief. For two reasons. He buried his face in his hand and breathed, "Oh, thank God."

"In the end, maybe it was a good thing," she philosophised. "Without that, I might have wanted to stay. It would have taken me much longer to work out that he's not the one I…"

He looked at her, again, with sadness. "I'm glad you realised it wasn't me. I'm glad you knew that I would never…"

"Of _course_ you would never. I should have known it from the start, from the moment he grabbed me."

"You didn't know it from the moment he grabbed you?"

"At first it was a _good_ grab," she told him. "You know, passionate. Like… like what I'd…"

"I see."

"Like what I'd been waiting for from you," she finished, no longer afraid to tell him. "You'd never do that either. Not again, anyway. I was lost in the moment, just so excited because I thought you were paying attention to me. I mean the kind of attention that I want. And yeah, his memories of 1913 were totally different from mine, and I wasn't sure why, but at first I didn't care. I just… wanted you. Like always."

He nodded.

"And he didn't seem so bad at first," she continued. "He had me believing he was you! He didn't mean to scare me, and he didn't mean it as an attack. He just wanted to be with me."

There was a little pause. "Right then and there? That didn't give you a clue?"

"Well, yeah! There were clues all over the place, starting with the ice-blue TARDIS and the immortal invalid knocking about the corridors."

He smirked, in spite of himself.

"But that's what not what made me change my mind."

"Change your mind?"

"Yeah, change my mind. You must have worked out that eventually, even though I love you, I realised I didn't want to… not yet. Not right then and there. I thought there were too many issues to suss out first, too much baggage to drag in, you know?"

"I do know."

"Right then and there," she repeated softly, barely moving her lips, not looking at him. The intensity of that moment, of the Mirror Doctor's lips on hers, his hands like spiders all over her body, came back to her. "I realised that if I let him, he'd peel my clothes off and push our relationship into overdrive in the next thirty seconds, and there would be no going back."

"That's true. There would be no going back."

"So I started to resist and tell him I didn't want to do it, and I tried to get him to talk to me. But then the zip of my velvet trousers got tugged hard enough to tear, and I realised…" she gulped. "That he was going to peel my clothes off and _force_ us into overdrive, whether I let him or not. That's when the panic set in."

He stared at the floor, somehow ashamed, though he had no reason to be. Her eyes shifted, and he did meet them, and she looked him over.

"He's twice my size," she whispered.

He nodded, crossing his arms tighter, slumping further, pulling his shoulders in a bit narrower.

"And twice my strength. I didn't have a chance if it came down to a game of push and shove. I was going to lose, simple as that."

Once again, he buried his face in his hand and sighed, "God, Martha. I'm so, so sorry."

"It's not your fault. I don't even entirely blame him," she confessed. "Not for that part, anyway. That part I understand."

"You are truly a merciful woman."

She chuckled. "Maybe too much for my own good."

"Maybe," he agreed. "How'd you get away?"

"Thank heaven that in our moment of blind passion, we'd chosen the sofa as our venue," she said. "I just rolled us to the floor. I think he hit his head and it woke him up."

"And he was… remorseful? I hope?"

"Yes," she told him.

"Good," he said with some finality. Then he piped up again. "But not good enough. A normal conscience works ahead of one's actions. One hopes for a man, or a being, whose sense of right and wrong and self-control prevents him from doing these things before it comes to that. Remorseful after the fact… that doesn't help you."

"That's true. One hopes for that," Martha agreed. "But Doctor, in my time with you, I've hoped for a lot of things and not got them. We make the best of what we're given."

"I suppose," he said, uncomfortably. He wouldn't look at her again.

A sudden fear overtook her. Had certain revelations of what they don't have destroyed what they _do_ have? She walked up close enough to feel his breath on her face. She touched his chin and encouraged his head up to meet her eyes with his.

"Doctor," she said. "I love you."

She expected nothing in return, other than recognition. She hoped for nothing other than simply not to lose him in the whirlwind of her own emotion.

With sadness, he said, "I know. I'm glad you're able to say so."

"Can you live with it?" she asked.

"I can. Can you?"

"I can."

_For now_, she told herself.

END


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